But, I am not laughing yet! We got back from our cruise to the Eastern Caribbean over 3 weeks ago and it took a while to start to feel normal again. It was quite the adventure! Said adventure started about 10 minutes after my dad dropped Chad, Bryan and Julie and I off at the airport.
We were to fly to Dallas at noon and then onto Fort Lauderdale. Due to severe weather in Dallas, our flight was delayed at first for 30 minutes. While sitting waiting to board the plane, I went to use my iPod, which was working fine when we left the house, only to find it totally broken. It wouldn't even turn on! "Oh, well" I thought. No biggie. I can go a week without tunes. HA!
Meanwhile, Elder Richard G. Scott was waiting to fly to Dallas as well so we got a photo with him. He was very kind and didn't seem the least bit annoyed with all of us who asked for pictures. I told Chad that nothing else could go wrong in the presence of a General Authority. Boy, was I wrong!
Finally around 1:00 they started to board the plane. 10 minutes later the pilot came over the speaker and announced that our flight had been delayed yet again and that our new departure time would be 2:30, but they were not going to let anyone off the plane because that could change at any time. So, we sat on the plane for 1 1/2 hours and finally took off. Since our flight out was delayed, they kept assuring us that any connecting flights would be pushed back as well. When we finally landed in Dallas the pilot, who I didn't really care for at this point, told us that we needed to wait 15-20 minutes for a gate. So, while sitting there on the tarmack, we watched the flight we were supposed to be on for Fort Lauderdale take off.
By now it was almost 5:00 and so we rushed to the nearest gate to see if we could get on the next flight that was supposed to leave at 8:45. The lady asked me for my last name and then for our boarding passes. While I handed them to her, Chad said, "Chad and Kristin Doyle" She told us we were already confirmed on the next flight, but that Bryan and Julie were not. She printed us new boarding passes and we left to see if we could find something for our friends. This flight kept getting pushed back and around 9:00 they said it wouldnt leave until midnight. Bryan worked his magic and got he and Julie on the flight so we all settled in to wait.
Around 10:45 that night, there was a bomb scare. About 30 feet from where we were sitting, someone had left their bag and they brought in a bomb sniffing dog. Quite entertaining!
I have always thought I had good intuition, and at about 10 minutes to midnight, I got that niggling feeling that I needed to check our boarding passes. I checked our seats and then looked at our names so I could hand Chad's to him and noticed the last name said Doyle, but the first names were James and Evelyn. I was in shock! I started to panic and decided to go to the nearest gate to have them print the correct passes only to be told that the real Evelyn and James were already checked in. UGH!
After waiting for 30 minutes to see if we could get on stand-by, we were booked on a flight to Miami the next morning at 6:00am. Even tho it was the airlines fault that we had sat in the airport for 7 hours holding the wrong boarding passes, they did nothing to help us. They were offering other passengers left and right a $300 travel voucher, a night in a hotel and a flight to Fort Lauderdale the next morning, but did nothing for us. Chad and I ended up staying over night in the airport, boarding the flight to Miami the next morning, sharing a cab with another couple at a total cost of $140 and making it to the hotel that we paid for and never got to see just in time to board a shuttle to take us to the boat. After not sleeping for 36 hours and not eating since 6pm the night before, we were beat and praying that the rest of the trip would go off without a hitch.
Long story short, (too late) the cruise was awesome! The whole trip it was really windy and that made for me getting sick on day 5, but other than that it was really fun. We got to spend time with our great friends, Bryan and Julie Jensen as well as Bryan's parents, Clyde and Connie, his brother Clint and sister-in-law Corrie and Corrie's parents, Marv and Barb.
The MSC is an Italian cruise line so we had a lot of authentic Italian food, which by day 5 I was pretty sick of. I was feeling so nauseous having to smell that food that all I ate from Wednesday night until we got off the boat on Saturday was hard rolls. I lost 3 pounds.... not many people can say that after a cruise! ;)
The ship itself was gorgeous! The places we stopped were the Dominican Republic (my very favorite) where we got to snorkel and hang out on the beach, St. Maarten, where we rented aqua boats and went to snorkel in ship wreck bay, Antigua where we got to zip line through the rain forest and Bahama's where we got to shop and relax. Chad enjoyed taking pictures of all the fire hydrants we could find. (He is easy to entertain!)
It was quite an adventure, but I was really glad to get home! I missed my kids terribly and am so grateful to all the family who helped take such good care of them so we could go! We knew they were in good hands, which helped us be able to relax and have fun!
ENJOY THE PICS!
